So, do Americans pop antidepressants like Tic Tacs to stay awake, or does a large portion of posters on this site have serious mental conditions?

Two things. One is that I really don't want you to think they are stimulants (re: your "stay awake" comment). I may be slicing this rather thinly, but they prevent you from feeling like pulling up the covers and just staying in bed. I never felt "stimulated" - like I did when I took ritalin in college to stay up for the night studying. Again, this may be a subtle difference, but they made me feel "normal" in the sense of having an easier time going about my day, as opposed to pumping me up. I suppose a better way to put it is that I felt like something was missing when I didn't take them, as opposed to feeling like they boosted me somehow.

The other thing is that I don't believe in medication unless there is no other alternative. This sounds counter intuitive when I say I'm (was) a Pharmacist, but it is true. It's too easy to use drugs as a crutch. But, I saw a benefit when I took them. I tried other things - like exercise, which helped somewhat, but I resisted taking them for years because of my opposition to taking medication and now I look back at years lost. I really wish I had manned up and gotten into therapy earlier.

I can't tell if your post is tongue-in-cheek or if you are serious. If tongue-in-cheek, then yeah, we keep our meds in our little PEZ dispensers and pop them like candy.

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"the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." Hermann Goering, April 1946.

It's one of those things where I think the attitude between Europeans and Americans really differ. From my point of view Americans come across as having a mentality of "throw pills at it to make it go away" to any problem, mental or physical. Most striking perhaps was when I had to go look for some stock photos for psychiatry, Dutch stock photo site gave images of doctors and worried looking people with some pills and mental institution like images and on one of the big American sites it was page after page of photos of pills.

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

A bit of an exaggeration perhaps, but not wholly inaccurate. Remember the percentage of us who actually have things like medical benefits and sick leave at work isn't that high. You have to do what you have to do so you can do what you have to do.

Yeah, it really comes down to being what's possible here, not necessarily what we'd like.

Mental illness is extremely stigmatized here, medical costs are really freaking high, and time off is super low.

You combine those things, and the kinds of treatments you'd need to really remedy problems like depression (besides hoping for the best and waiting it out, which has always been my tactic, and I don't recommend it) really aren't accessible. Your employer finding out you are taking time off to go see a therapist is really, really low on your list of things to do. You have very little time you can take for personal mental health without expunging your sick leave or vacation time (which is already under a quarter, at least, of what most EU workers get).

And then you have to PAY for the treatment. Hopefully you have decent insurance, but copays for specialists can easily be $30 for decent insurance, up to $100+ for crappier insurance. That's a lot to pay out, when you also need to pay for the medications. And not all plans even cover mental health in the first place (though that's changing rapidly thanks to the exchanges).

The reality is that most Americans can't afford many other treatment options to pills, because they work in scenarios where they don't have employers who will tolerate a change in productivity, and they can't even financially afford more expensive treatment options in the first place.

In that environment, pills are often the best solution. Better to chemically regulate and keep your job than try and go about it other ways, pay out for it, and then possibly lose your job because of productivity... thereby removing your access to treatment entirely.

TL:DR: We have really ****** medical care over here, particularly for mental health issues, so pills are the easiest, and safest, way to make treatment work.

For starters, the game is almost exclusively self-found now. (Edit: for clarification, I mean that you get all of your gear from finding it yourself, as opposed to trading or buying it) They have made it so that legendaries are now Bind on Account. Rares can still be traded, but they are usually inferior to legendaries. So how are you supposed to go about getting the best gear? Well, there have been a few major changes.

First off, drop rates have been massively increased for legendaries. You're finding less loot overall, but a higher proportion of legendaries and rares.

Secondly, the things that are dropping now are much better, objectively and for you specifically. Previously everything was much more random, now they have implemented a system they call "smart loot" that, when a drop is rolled, has a large chance to check your class and edit the drop to something that the character you are playing would use. In addition, affix ranges have been narrowed and in many cases buffed, and just stupid combinations eliminated (no more strength on wizard hats, for example.)

Before, you would log in, kill a lot of elite packs, ignore all blues, most rares, and pray for very specific legendaries to drop. Anything that wasn't a Mempo with crit chance was worthless, and you often wouldn't even pick it up. Now, you log in, kill everything in sight, pick up everything, and salvage what you don't use (even whites are useful in this regard). When a legendary drops, and you will find one roughly once every three hours or so, you ID it (rares are pre-ID'd now) which serves as a really cool drumroll effect. And when it's ID'd, more times than not you have this stupid grin on your face because it's really good.

The legendaries aren't good because they have high numbers. A lot of legendaries are just that - just abnormally high numbers. But a lot of the legendaries are good because they have some unique property about them that you make a build around. For example, last night a crossbow dropped for my Demon Hunter that causes him to leave a clone behind whenever he uses Vault (that tumble move). This has led to me making a build where I spam Vault, keeping as far away from enemies as possible, and mowing them down from range. Occasionally I'll vault into the middle of the pack, do a big Fan of Knives, and Vault back out. The legendaries are fun, not just stat sticks.

And then there's the combat. Previously the combat felt very binary. You were alive and at full health until suddenly you caught a large burst, and then you were dead. There was no inbetween. Now, however, you can be sitting at half health, or low health, and play differently as you scramble for a health globe. You can be sitting at 3/4 health for a significant period of time. You don't just tank through the poison puddles, or move at the last second of the frost nova. You have to play intelligently, and are rewarded for doing so. A large part of fixing this involved removing lifesteal, which allowed the toxic "alive until suddenly dead" gameplay. Combine that with massively increased health pools, and combat is much much less spikey and much more fun. They have made SIGNIFICANT progress with the combat, and it all feels great.

Edit: Wyatt Cheng posted on reddit back in November, and I feel this really emphasizes their philosophy with combat. Coming from Guild Wars, which suffered from similar problems in dungeons, I feel like they've made a lot of very intelligent decisions with the combat this time around.

So no content changes? Cause that was my main issue with the game, running the exact same circle in act 3 over and over and over and over and over because it was so much more efficient than anything else for XP or loot. I managed to get to paragon lvl 68 or so I think but that's not even halfway through the grind to 100.

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

Also, kitty at least enjoys her medicine. **** cat bit my hand trying to eat the pills and the fluid is apparently tasty as well although the method of getting it in her mouth via a measured pipette/needle kind of thing was confusing her and she tried to eat the plastic thing too. 4 days to go and it already has bitemarks.

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

TL:DR: We have really sh*tty medical care over here, particularly for mental health issues, so pills are the easiest, and safest, way to make treatment work.

Yup.

Seeing a therapist cost me 8x what the pills cost, plus I was using up all my sick time going to the appointments, meaning I took vacation when I actually got sick, which means the whole "life is hectic and it's good to take a break from it" side of the mental health thing couldn't get addressed properly.

And I have good benefits and good insurance here...

Also, the changes sound interesting, but my urge to play D3 is way down now that the AH is gone. As stupid as it is sometimes I enjoy messing around with in-game economies. It's all part of the fun.

Nah, she's not bullying anyone now, she's a little slower than usual so her brother is picking on her now.

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

How about we imagine you sitting half dressed in a darkened room, slumped over your keyboard, slurring obscenities about ungrateful school children and peeling the label from a near-empty bottle of vodka while you post?

Vodka is for Russians and Finns, I imagine the Danish just drink beer.

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

I like to imagine horse in shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, flip flops, big beard and with an eternal smile on his face and beer in his hand. Maybe fishing gear in the other.

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

Oy, Fishy (or anyone else), do weapon types play any kind of significant role in D3, or are they just skins? Like, do they have a tendency towards different stats, different swing speeds, reach, etc? Or is it like giving a two-handed sword to a character is the same as a two-handed axe?

I've been missing the days of gaming where weapon choice actually impacted the way you played your character*.

*I'm realistically talking about MMOs, here, but I'll group D3 into online gaming.

GW2 was interesting, but the weapons just weren't balanced enough to be too interesting in any of the classes I liked. ESO is just a general letdown (though I'm downloading the client for this weekend's beta test, because I can't NOT give the game a chance... **** ES title...)

I fear I may have accidentally damaged a conveyor belt in the local grocery store. I had to buy kitty litter and the pack caught at the end of the belt at the cashier and tore open, the machine made a nasty grinding noise after that.

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

Technically it's the fault of the company who designed the conveyor belt/cashier station thing since the end of the conveyor belt is prone to snagging on heavy things with loose packaging.

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

I can't really blame the maybe 17 year old girl for not wanting to lift the ~20lb pack if she doesn't have to.

Not that it really matters, they're probably insured against this stuff anyway.

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

You guys are really over thinking this, I just thought it was kind of funny because, well, expensive crunching noises are always funny if you don't have to pay for them.

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

Music at speed skating events is so cheesy... I've heard Ice Ice Baby at least 4 times in the past 2 hours. On the other hand, the guys racing a 500m to the sound of the A-Team soundtrack must've had a blast.

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

I haven't seen the other cat so I don't know about lost, for all I know that other cat could be crippled for life or dead in a gutter somewhere.

And this is why cats should stay inside where they are safe. Especially if they have a brother or sister to play with.

As per the cashier comment, I can speak with authority that we have limited control over the belts. If something got stuck, I could have either turned the belt off by flipping a switch or tried to cover up the camera lens that detects when the belt needs to stop. It's not like we have a step that we push up to control it. It requires very quick response time to save that carton of eggs.

I haven't seen the other cat so I don't know about lost, for all I know that other cat could be crippled for life or dead in a gutter somewhere.

And this is why cats should stay inside where they are safe. Especially if they have a brother or sister to play with.

Oh **** no. If they stay inside they tear up the house, they've got way too much energy for a house as small as mine. I'd rather deal with the paranoia of one of them not coming home than with the trouble of not getting to sleep because cats are fighting and running all over the house.

Edit: the Imperial March from Star Wars playing as some skaters enter the rink for their race.

Edited, Feb 28th 2014 9:02pm by Aethien

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

I thought you liked story based games? Cause you know D3 has a story with more holes than Swiss cheese right?

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.

Earl grey is delicious. If you have good earl grey anyway. Also, you realize that you're going to have to run through the story at least 3 times, right?

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Theophany wrote:YOU'RE AN ELITIST @#%^ AETHIEN, NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND PEOPLE HATE YOU. someproteinguy wrote:Aethien you take more terrible pictures than a Japanese tourist. Astarin wrote:One day, Maz, you'll learn not to click on anything Aeth links.